Civil Disobedience

Question: When, if ever, is
it morally justifiable to disobey the law?

This is a 4th of July question, Boston Tea
Party, and that sort of thing. And also, I think this is particularly relevant at this
time because of the Timothy McVeigh trial. In the most general case I think it is possible
that some people (certainly McVeigh and Terry Nichols, assuming they did it) do not think
a bombing of this type is necessarily wrong.

At what point would YOU decide to disobey the law
if the laws and the government enforcing them depart from your beliefs in regard to
morality? For example, would you have been willing to hide Jews in Germany in the late
'30s? Would you be willing to take up arms and shoot at the Gestapo as they dragged the
Jews who lived next door away? Or if the Gestapo (or what ever it might be called in your
time and place) were about to drag you and your family away? Or help runaway slaves during
the 1850's and early 1860's in the US? Or would you as a member of the US army fired upon
Native American women and children after being ordered to? Or what if our government
required everyone to have an electronic identification device imbedded in his or her
skull? Or your SSN tattooed on your wrist? Or required that you (as a non-criminal --
until now) register with the police every time you left one jurisdiction and entered a new
police jurisdiction (it could made easy with today's technology -- magnetic encoded credit
card like badges at the county lines and town borders -- that sort of thing)? Or required
that you show positive ID for every purchase you made (makes it hard to conceal your
feeding the family of 'Jews' living in your attic). Or what if the police start making
"routine checks" of your vehicles for drugs, politically incorrect weapons (the
UK has outlawed many types of knifes), and other contraband? What about registration of
your firearms? Confiscation of your firearms? Possession of more than X rounds of
ammunition? Or what if the government required that you obtained permission before having
a child? Or required that your child be taught a version of history that you believed was
incorrect? Or prohibited you from viewing certain materials? Or prohibited you from
criticizing the government? Or prohibited you from private meetings (a public
"watchdog" must be in attendance and the entire meeting video taped) of more
than X people? Or declared that mere possession of explosive components was a crime (never
mind that kitchen flour can be made to explode)? Or a tax on
singles/gays/non-whites/whatever? Or (il)legal abortion? There are people who believe
abortion is murder. Is their claim that much different than believing Jews are human and
qualified to enjoy the same rights as other humans even though the law claims they are not
(US law on abortion, compared to 1939 German laws regarding people of Jewish descent)?
Would you break the law to stop someone from having a legal abortion? Others claim
abortion is a right. If abortion was illegal in your state or country would you help
someone to obtain one in another state or country even if such action were against the
law?

Basically, at what point, if any, do you, as a freedom
loving person, declare you are willing to disobey authority and potentially suffer the
consequences? And further, at what point, if any, are you willing to use force to exercise
that freedom or prevent the arrest and/or prosecution of people trying to exercise their
freedoms? And if you are, at some point, willing to use force, what form would that force
be?

Or perhaps you are one who says, "the law is the
law", or "peace at any cost". And if so, what would you say to Patrick
Henry, who declared, "Give me liberty or give me death!" Or to Samual Adams who
in 1776 said:

If you love wealth better than liberty, the
tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in
peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you.
May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our
countrymen.

And if so, what would you say to the families of the
millions who fought the British, the Japanese, the Germans, and all the others and ended
up giving their lives for your freedom? Would you tell them, "Freedom is just not
that important to me?" Or, "I wouldn't give it up to another government, but if
my government takes it from me, that's okay?"

Answers: As if there is a definitive answer. Heavy sigh. Okay, I read a
bunch of books, still more to read so as I get more information on the subject that I
think is worthwhile I'll update this.

Mahatma Gandhisaid that under no circumstances should violence be used. In
fact he did things such as call off exceedingly successful, peaceful, strikes because he
wanted the authorities to be able to save face. Interesting technique, yes? Another thing
he did, when he disobeyed the law he would tell the authorities exactly what he was going
to do. He felt that time in prison was well spent, he got to rest, pray, and meditate. And
Gandhi was enormously successful in getting changes in the laws. He also believed the Jews
in Nazi Germany could " score a lasting victory over the German gentiles in the
sense that they will have converted the latter to an appreciation of human dignity."
All without a single violent act on their part. Believable? Read on. This was first
published in Harijan on November 11, 1938. I found it in Gandhi The Power of Pacifism,
pages 146 and 147:

If I were a Jew and were born in Germany and
earned my livelihood there, I would claim Germany as my home even as the tallest gentile
German might, and challenge him to shoot me or cast me in the dungeon . And for doing
this I should not wait for the fellow Jews to join me in civil resistance, but would have
confidence that in the end the rest were bound to follow my example. If one Jew or all the
Jews were to accept the prescription ere offered, he or they cannot be worse of than
now . The calculated violence of Hitler may even result in a general massacre of the
Jews by way of his first answer to the declaration of such hostilities. But if the Jewish
mind could be prepared for voluntary sacrifice, even the massacre I have imagined could be
turned into a day of thanksgiving that Jehovah had wrought deliverance for the race even
at the hands of a tyrant. For to the God-fearing, death has no terror .

If I had to summarize Gandhi's method in a way that most
people could grasp just a glimmer of what he was talking about it would be as follows:

Gandhi's philosophy was to have no fear. Fear of
absolutely nothing. Not fines, nor loss of property, nor prison, nor torture, nor death.
He acquired no property. He made his own clothes (for reasons related to the exploitation
of factory workers) right down to the spinning of the yarn. When you are in that position,
in many ways you make yourself nearly invulnerable to authority. They cannot successfully
threaten you. They can only physically restrain you (death being the ultimate physical
restraint). And even government authority has limits to its resources. How many people can
they physically restrain at once?

Interesting, yes? You become powerful as you are
stripped of all possessions -- as long as you have no fear. There are hints that the
Germans thought he was onto something, the same book, on page 146 claims, "After the
publication in 1938 the Nazi press launched a fierce attack against
Gandhi."

What I have been unable to find from my readings of
Gandhi is some method for objectively determining what laws should be disobeyed. There are
vague things about injustice, and lots of examples of things he protested against, but
nothing (yet) that helps answer the fundamental question.

Katie, my
wife's sister-in-law is very much involved in Catholicism (she would be a priest if the
religion would allow it). I asked about her thoughts on when it was morally justified to
disobey the law. Again it was vague on the when and specific on the non-violence. Also of
interest is that apparently the Church has made some fairly recent changes in their
doctrine about war. There used to be a concept of a "just war". If some specific
conditions were met then a war could be considered "just" if it were waged in a
proper manner (no action taken against civilians, that sort of thing). They no longer have
such a doctrine. Something about nuclear weapons, fallout, etc. I asked about personal
defense. Is it acceptable to use force to defend yourself or other innocent people against
someone that is attempting to physically harm you. She said that was left up to the
individual. It's not a sin to do that. I found this odd. If an individual could use force
to defend themselves, then wouldn't it be acceptable for a group of people to use force?
And if a group can use force to resist why can't a government wage war against an
aggressor? I didn't have the opportunity to get into that with her, perhaps another time.

recently had two articles in The Liberty Pole
about "Tripwires" (see My
Tripwire and Ultimate
Tripwire both links were dead so Ry
found and posted the originals--Thanks Ry). Great reading. Basically, in My Tripwire the
authors say censorship is the ultimate tripwire. As long as we may speak, publish,
and associate freely, we have the means to resist tyranny. They claim firearms
confiscation is easy to evade and therefore is only secondary in importance as a tripwire.
As long as we have the means to expose the truth we have the means to change the
system. They go on to say the basis of when to resist is as follows:

The enforcement of any laws--local,state or
federal--that through the action or inaction of the courts makes nugatory the individual
means of resisting tyranny, justifies resistance.

If you have to look up "nugatory" don't feel
bad. I had to also -- it means "Having no force, invalid". Thus,
they claim, firearms confiscation may be a sufficient tripwire because it will
make resistance impossible.

In Ultimate Tripwire a different author
comments on the previous article and says:

... there are two additional and significant "tripwires:"
(1) Positive Identification of the enemy, and (2) A strict constructionist leader.

This is because of his concern for anarchy. Only
if resistance is focused on the problem and a solution will
resistance be preferable to the problem.

Unintended Consequences
by John Ross: Another expression of basically the same viewpoint that I have heard
expressed, most recently via an email discussion with someone, is put forth in the book Unintended
Consequences. Basically it is this:When
one's ability to resist is under assault, that is the time to fight to the teeth. One of the
major characters in the book gives the analogy of someone inviting you to ride with him in
his van. Perhaps even insisting that you take the ride with him. When you get
to the van he asks you to put handcuffs on that secure you to the van. It might be
entirely innocent, but can you take the chance? If you accept the invitation you
will be without significant recourse if it turns into a hostile situation. You must
resist while you still have the means.

How about The Turner
Diaries? Check out my review of
The Turner Diaries on Amazon.com. Basically
the main character "Earl Turner" joins the underground and violently resists the
federal government when they arrest him for possession of a firearm. He and the
others in his organization blame their political situation on the Jews and non-whites --
which must be exterminated. Non-whites are sub humans and therefore are a genetic
pollutant to the human race. Laws which protect them are "racial treason".
This author needs to do some thinking on my question for the fall of '97 -- How do you determine right from wrong? Truth from falsity? Because,
if he still believes as the main characters in the book do, he doesn't have a clue.

Joe Huffman -- My thoughts are probably best described as a mixture of
Gandhi and Ross. Quite a combination huh? There are injustices that demand
action. Those actions should be non-violent if at all possible. But, there are
cases when violence is fully justified. I think Winston Churchhill says it best for
me:

If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if
you will not fight when victory will be sure and not so costly, you may come to the moment
when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of
survival. There may be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no chance of
victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

EMail response-- I think this person obtained this from someplace else (in a
significantly expanded version credit is given here to someone else:
http://www.yauponcreek.org/GunControl/Learning.html), and I'm not
sure he/she wants their name on it anyway, so I'll leave it as anonymous.

Remember the lessons of the 20th Century:

Lesson No. 1:

If a bureaucrat, or a soldier sent by a bureaucrat, comes
to knock down your door and take you someplace you don't want to go because of
who you are or what you think-- kill him. If you can, kill the
politician who sent them. You will likely die anyway, and you will be
saving someone else the same fate. For it is a universal truth that the
intended victims always far outnumber the tyrant's executioners. Any nation
which practices this lesson will quickly run out of executioners and tyrants,
or they will run out of it.

Lesson No. 2: If a bureaucrat, or a soldier sent by a bureaucrat, comes
to knock down your door and confiscate your firearms-- kill him. The
disarmament of law-abiding citizens is the required precursor to genocide.

Lesson No. 3: If a bureaucrat tells you that he must know if you have a
firearm so he can put your name on a list for the common good, or wants to issue
you an identity card so that you may be more easily identified-- tell him to
go to hell. Registration of people and firearms is the required precursor to
the tyranny which permits genocide. Bureaucrats cannot send soldiers to doors
that aren't on their list.

Lesson No. 4: Believe actions, not words. Tyrants are consummate
liars. Just because a tyrant is "democratically elected" doesn't mean
that he believes in democracy. Reference Adolf Hitler, 1932. And just because a
would-be tyrant mouths words of reverence to law and justice, or takes a solemn
oath to uphold a constitution, doesn't mean he believes such concepts apply to
him. Reference Bill Clinton, among others. The language of the lie is just
another tool of killers. A sign saying "Arbeit Macht Frei" (Work Makes
You Free) posted above an execution camp gate doesn't mean that anybody gets out
of there alive, and a room labeled "Showers" doesn't necessarily make
you clean. Bill Clinton notwithstanding, the meaning of "is" is plain
when such perverted language gets you killed. While all tyrants are liars, it is
true that not all political liars are would-be tyrants-- but they bear close
watching. And keep your rifle handy.